


Unbroken

by orphan_account



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Elves, Cats, Comfort, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Kittens, M/M, Sweet, Sweet/Hot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 23:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8467687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Rommath wakes from a horrific, recurring nightmare of losing Kael'thas and wanders off to seek companionship with his favorite feline. He instead finds the Regent Lord waiting for him, ready to offer warmth and adoring comfort of his own.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinyforce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyforce/gifts).



> I asked Shinyforce if there was a specific Lor/Romm crack that needed to exist in the world and her glorious answer was the Grand Magister, the Regent Lord, and kittens. Of course, I had to add kissing. I so want Rommath to have some joy...so here, he gets it. <3

_“This is not a dream, my lovely,” Kael’thas murmurs, his voice low in his chest, smoke curling in lazy tendrils around his golden head. “Why would you even say that?”_

_But Rommath knows that it is—and always has been—nothing but a dream. The only dream, at least for more years than he cares to count._

_His prince has never kissed him like this, lips full and warm and swollen from the fervor of his passion, his hands roaming so eagerly, tongue and teeth claiming and bold. And his prince has never withered to ash, gray gossamers sparking with remnants of a terrible fire the instant Rommath places a trembling hand upon his face._

“ _No! Please, no!_ ”

Rommath snaps to consciousness. Someone is crying out and he only realizes the desperate, broken voice assaulting his ears is his own when his throat begins to burn.  He gazes wildly around him, heart thundering against his ribs. He is sitting bolt upright, sweating and shaking in the ruins of his bed—he wears nothing but smallclothes, his satin nightshirt in a slippery heap on the floor, and his hair snaking in damp, dark tendrils over his naked chest.

His breath hitches. He feels his nails bite into the flesh of his palms where his hands have curled into fists.

_And I lose him again, just like that. When will it not hurt?_

Rommath takes a deep breath, composing himself so quickly he is almost taken aback by his own coldness.

_But if I could not cast this deplorable weakness away in moments, I would be worthless to my people. I owe them everything._

He drags himself out of his tangled sheets, feet sinking into thick carpet and he takes a deep pull from the cut-crystal goblet on his bedside table. Just like that, Rommath is himself again—he smooths his hair away from his face, and he lets his expression settle into its accustomed mask of mild disdain. He slips into a robe—not scarlet, which he wears in his public duties at the Spire and anywhere else he finds himself called—but a deep, celestial blue embroidered with threads of silver fashioned into the patterns of constellations.

_I cannot stay here. I have to cleanse this away, to feel something real--_

Rommath knows where he is going without even thinking about it. He only notices he has forgotten to put on slippers when he is halfway to his destination but he doesn’t care…his footfalls are even more silent than they would have been otherwise and the cool  air is refreshing and clean.

He pads noiselessly through a series of back hallways, finding his way to the nearly-hidden service door he knows is never used this time of night. Once again outside, several floors removed from the balcony where he often peers over the city from his personal suites, he navigates the hedgerows and landscaped trees of the back garden, the pathway’s cobbles stained deep purple and blue from the shadows of the night. Rommath peers ahead of him—he is the only one here, as far as he can tell, so he ducks under a low awning, already relaxing as the scents of clean hay and warm fur surround him.

“My, my, Sable…you are such a _clever_ girl,” he murmurs proudly and folds onto his knees in front of a sturdy, padded box in the corner. A jet-black cat, lithe and gleaming in the light of the single candle he has now lit with a hastily muttered word, shoves her head unceremoniously into Rommath’s hand, already purring so loudly he can hear the soothing rumble over the beating of his own heart, over the blood singing in his ears. Sable winds herself around his arm, butting against him with no guile or shame. A tiny squeak sounds from the box, and then another and another—Sable’s kittens are waking, her movements stirring them from milk-dreams and whatever it is that kittens think of in their tiny, furry sleep.

Rommath _almost_ smiles. He scoops up one of the kittens in his wide palm, gently curling slender fingers around the tiny creature. “Ah, Sapphire,” he whispers, seeing the neat, even stripes banding the kitten’s side. Sapphire’s fur is mostly a peculiar blue-gray—Rommath knows this as he knows the features of each of the four kittens he has fussed over and nurtured in recent days.

He does not hear the footsteps behind him. He has not thought to set up wards.

A hand, warm and heavy, rests suddenly on his right shoulder. Rommath freezes but does not turn around. He knows the scent of the man behind him, knows the welcome weight of that careful, calloused hand.

“I like the names you’ve given them,” the familiar, low voice rumbles at Rommath’s ear.

Rommath leans forward as he places Sapphire back in her warm nest next to her sister and brothers. He lets his hair, unbound and indecently unkempt, fall in a curtain around his face and he is grateful to be able to hide.

“Lor’themar,” he says simply, and stays where he is on his knees, head bowed, his Regent Lord’s thumb now tracing slow, gentle circles over the smooth fabric of his robe.

*

Lor’themar cannot help but stare, awestruck.

He has never seen his Grand Magister so undone. He has never seen Rommath so vulnerable, so utterly unguarded.

He is not ready for the violence of emotion that crashes through him, wild and roaring like a forest fire. Lor’themar understands, somehow, the importance of this moment. He does not speak needlessly; he does not force the other man to talk. He merely lets himself be near Rommath, idly soothing his fingers over the cool silk covering the Magister’s shoulder.

_He is stunning in blue…_

Rommath’s night-sky hair hangs in surprisingly unkempt strands over his face, spilling down his back. He folds those strong hands in his lap and kneels like a courtesan at the foot of a lover.

The little black cat—Sable—purrs so loudly that the sound resonates in the air around them both.

“Why are you here?” Rommath asks finally, his voice rough at the edges.

Lor’themar thinks the other man might be trembling. He breathes in deeply, Rommath’s sin-and-spice scent quickening his blood. His own breath catches when Rommath turns and peers at him through his curtain of silky black hair.

“I could not sleep. I was walking, found myself near your apartments…I heard you crying out, and I followed you.”

Lor’themar is mildly embarrassed at the admission but not terribly ashamed. He should not have been lingering near Rommath’s chambers, but he had wanted— _needed_ —to talk to him. Something had changed between them, something for which he does not yet have words, then…

_He was crying out as if in pain. A nightmare. I could almost smell his fear._

“How very presumptuous of you,” Rommath scoffs but there is no real vitriol in the other man’s words. He cocks his head to the side, studying Lor’themar with a strange, fey expression flickering over his face—an expression that reminds the Regent Lord of the cat at their feet.

“Indeed. I am ever the Farstrider swain,” Lor’themar replies dryly. He does not imagine the wry curve to the Grand Magister’s lips. Something in him thrills, a strange sense of power in knowing he can make Rommath smile.

_There are not many who can._

“The others are Hyacinth, Beryl and Onyx,” Rommath says quietly, pointing at each kitten in turn. “I have paid the stablehands richly to ensure their well-being,” Rommath adds with a proud lift of his chin that sends jolts of lightning through Lor’themar’s body.

“You give them good and proper names. Clearly you understand the proud and dignified nature of felines,” Lor’themar says with a grin at the same time Sable plops to her side, rolling in an undignified manner to better scratch her ear.

Rommath gives Lor’themar another look, this one even more inscrutable than the last. He tucks a gleaming hank of hair behind his ear, not dropping his gaze. In that moment he is so _very_ Rommath—on his knees but proud and straight as a prince. In his dressing robe, barefoot in a stable but covered in the stars that hang like precious jewels somewhere in the night-blue sky above them. Rommath--solemn, disdainful but yearning, a broken man seeking comfort in the soft mews and downy fur of new life.

 _His_ Rommath—stubborn, willful, acerbic. Achingly beautiful—grace and spite and a desperate need to be adored, to be safe, to be _loved_.

Lor’themar cannot help himself—he reaches before he realizes what he is doing.

His is bundling a stunned Rommath into his arms, crushing him to his chest, fingers tangled in his hair…he is kissing him, again, and again and again.

*

Rommath cannot think, cannot understand.

He doesn’t care.

It started with purrs and tiny paws, with desperation for comfort and something simpler than all he has ever been. Now, his world is a star-struck tangle of platinum hair wound through his fingers, the other man’s lips pressing to his and tasting of peppermint and night air, the clean, brisk scent of the Regent Lord’s bathing soap on his warm skin. Skin that Rommath is now raking with his teeth in a frenzy of hungry kisses, that he is tasting, committing to memory in his amazement.

Rommath is still on his knees, Lor’themar in front of him, closing him in place with those long ranger’s legs, arms around him protectively, claiming and strong. He is surrounded by Lor’themar—he is warmer than he has ever been and drunk with the sweetness of it, sweet as summer mead and spun-sugar candy.

The inelegant keen of Sable’s loudest mew breaks through his fog. Rommath feels, hears Lor’themar laughing against his lips. He surprises himself with his own soft rumble of laughter, drawing away to pet the cat who has wedged herself between them, her tail flicking at Lor’themar’s white-blond horse-tail. His Regent Lord laughs again, a youthful sound that melts away the weariness from the other man’s face, that gentles his scars. Rommath sits hard onto his backside, scooping Sable up to hold her for a moment against his chest—warm, her beating heart and thundering purr the most beautiful thing he has ever heard.

“Rommath,” Lor’themar says quietly.

 _No,_ that _is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard…_

“Mmm?” Rommath looks up at the other man, and his heart nearly quails from what he sees in Lor’themar’s expression.

“Come inside with me, sit and have some hot chocolate with vanilla and rum. Bring a book—read, do whatever it is you Magisters do when you cannot sleep.”

Rommath nods. He doesn’t trust himself to speak. He kisses Sable on her head, places her on the bed he had crafted for her and the kittens, and allows Lor’themar to help him to his feet. Lor’themar twines his strong, calloused fingers with Rommath’s and they walk together through the quiet garden, and Rommath does not feel the cold or the roughness of the cobbles underneath his feet.

He feels no pain. _Almost_ no fear…there is only the man beside him, peering over at him now and again with his one good eye as if Rommath were the most precious thing in the world.

There is only the moment, and the next, each one a heartbeat, each one a gentle reminder that there is such a thing as unbroken hope.


End file.
